HURRICANE – Communities in southwest Utah have always sprung from wherever the water flowed, or wherever the people could make it flow.

Southern Paiute farmers grew corn, squash, melons, gourds and other crops along the banks of the Virgin River and its tributaries, and Mormon pioneers scratched out an irrigation network that stretched far into the surrounding landscapes.

In 1904, after 11 years of backbreaking work, water flowed onto the Hurricane bench via a mostly hand-dug canal, changing the dusty flatland into a fruitful plain of orchards, vineyards, and fields growing sugar beets, alfalfa and various grains.

More than a century later, a well-known farmer named John Wadsworth is keeping up the tradition, growing an assortment of crops and keeping up a 280-tree orchard of his prized peaches — four different varieties, sold by the box.

In more than 40 years of farming in the area, he’s dealt with floods, droughts and everything in between, all while watching Washington County grow into a thriving community approaching 150,000 residents.

But he’s never seen a year like this one.

“I’ve farmed here since 1969. I have never seen the river as low as it was this summer,” he said, noting that while there have been drier years, there has never been so much demand on the water.

Three years of drought, combined with population growth and ever-increasing pressures on the Virgin River’s supplies, prompted the Utah Division of Water Rights to issue a priority call, the first, on the river and its tributaries, cutting off a long list of users along the system from diverting water for farms, fields and other irrigation.

For farmers like Wadsworth and others with an interest in the ebb and flow of Washington County water, it signaled the beginning of a new reality — one that could come with some very hard decisions.

“It’s an awakening,” Mayor Bruce Densley said of the town of Virgin, where a large number of water rights were lost to the cuts. “It’s eye-opening. We’ll just have to do the best we can while the canal company has the little water they’ll get.”

Bracing for the worst

Despite the drought and the desperate situation for many farmers and other irrigators, most of Washington County’s residents haven’t seen much change at all, other than prohibitions in place for watering during daylight hours.

Thanks to a large storage network, there is still plenty of drinking water available, and rather than change rates or initiate mandatory restrictions, providers have been able to dip into the reserve supplies.

As of last week, the area’s two main reservoirs, Sand Hollow and Quail Creek, were about 60 percent full, maintaining enough supplies that water managers were confident they could keep the tap running like usual, at least for now.

The problem comes if the drought continues, said Ron Thompson, general manager of the Washington County Water Conservancy District.

“That’s when we start to look at some tougher decisions,” he said.

The drought has intensified the discussion surrounding the Lake Powell Pipeline, a 140-mile project the district has already been anticipating sometime after 2020.

Seen as a way to dip into some of Utah’s remaining share of Colorado River supplies, it could cost nearly $1 billion just to build, according to the most recent estimate.

A number of other projects are in the works to increase supplies, including new reservoirs outside of Toquerville and in Warner Valley, and a well system has been tapped to help access water stored in an aquifer beneath Sand Hollow Reservoir.

A committee is working on a new conservation plan that members hope will drive down the demand, making more efficient use of whatever supplies are available.

Since 2000, the district has already reported an 18 percent decrease in per capita usage.

But managers say the low-hanging fruit is gone.

Much of the agricultural land has already shifted to less water-intensive urban uses, and a large network to deliver low-quality secondary water to golf courses, school and other large irrigators has already been completed.

Thompson maintains that whatever smaller measures are made, the Lake Powell Pipeline is the only major difference-maker. Capable of delivering 69,000 acre feet, it could essentially double the county’s supplies.

With state population projections anticipating the county to grow to more than 580,000 people in the next 50 years, Thompson said he sees no other way to keep up.

Others contend that Washington County especially, and Utah in general, have not been realistic enough about the need to take more steps toward conservation.

Washington County water managers have taken heat for the county’s water use, which at 320 gallons per capita, per day (gpcd) outpaced the state average of 240 gallons gpcd as of 2010, and is still well ahead of other desert southwest cities like Tucson or Sante Fe.

LeAnn Skrzynski, executive director of a local advocacy group called Citizens for Dixie’s Future, said she was bothered that stricter restrictions were in place this year.

During the worst drought in memory, with so much attention on drought conditions throughout the southwestern U.S., seems the logical time to go further, she said.

“What does that tell you? Now is the perfect time to encourage more efficient use,” she said.

A larger battle

While Washington County has its own debate over the pipeline, the region-wide drought that has struck California, Nevada and Arizona has shined a brighter spotlight on the stresses facing the Colorado River system, along with the 50 million people and 4 million acres of farmland it supplies.

Utah is one of seven states dependent on the Colorado River and its complex network of manmade delivery systems, and while water managers across the region have stressed a message of collaboration, governments in each state have been jockeying for position in the past 18 months after a Bureau of Reclamation study estimated that the river would fall 3.2 million acre-feet short over the next 50 years of meeting the region’s expected population growth.

The drought has intensified the discussion, with Lake Mead dropping to 1,080 feet above sea level this year, down from a high of 1,225 feet in 1983 and just five feet away from triggering mandatory cuts in Nevada and Arizona.

Las Vegas could lose its stake in the lake if levels fell below 1,000 feet, and the Southern Nevada Water Authority is spending an estimated $800 million on a new pipeline to keep water flowing.

The scope of the problem has some wondering how the current water allocation rules governing the use of the Colorado River will hold up.

Allotments are based on a compact signed in 1922 by Utah, California, Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Wyoming and Mexico.

Back in Washington County, users will be watching closely, faced with the type of problems that the Southern Paiutes and early pioneers likely never envisioned.

“There is a lot of politics in water. Always has been,” John Wadsworth said.

Follow David DeMille on Twitter, @SpectrumDeMille.

Reservoir levels in Washington County

• Sand Hollow: 57 percent of 51,124 acre feet.

• Quail Creek: 60 percent of 40,252 acre feet.

• Kolob: 46 percent of 5,585 acre feet.

• Gunlock: 33 percent of 8,652 acre feet.

• Ivins: 20 percent of 778 acre feet.

Source: Washington County Water Conservancy District.

Lake Powell Pipeline

Representative of many of those debates, the Lake Powell Pipeline would cost some $1 billion just to build, then pump water underground some 138 miles from Lake Powell to Sand Hollow Reservoir in Hurricane. It could deliver up to 86,000 acre feet of water per year — an acre foot being enough to supply two to four homes — essentially doubling the area’s supplies and helping to keep up with state population projections that forecast Washington County to grow from 147,000 people today to 580,000 over the next 50 years.

Plans for the pipeline are in the midst of a years-long licensing process. State and local water managers forecast that it would be needed sometime after 2020.